


Time to Spare

by itssupergay



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 15:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17062103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itssupergay/pseuds/itssupergay
Summary: The ability to know when a person will die without being able to alter their fate has never sucked more than when she’s falling for a pretty girl against her will and knows there isn’t enough time.AU based on ‘Colorblind’ by Siera Maley





	Time to Spare

**Author's Note:**

> I really shouldn't be starting a new multi-chapter fic, but here I am. Hope you all enjoy this first chapter. And if anyone is still interested in my other unfinished fic 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' - I'm finally working on the next chapter for that, but I'm not sure yet when it will be finished, so keep a look out for it, I suppose. Thanks for reading!

"You're stacking those upside down again."

Beca frowned and focused on the CDs she'd been restacking on the shelf in front of her. Sure enough, nearly every CD title was upside down, exactly the way Luke had instructed them  _not_  to do.

"Fuck," she muttered, and began tugging the plastic cases out with a little too much force. If the guy weren't station manager and in total control of her paychecks, she'd happily tell Luke just where he could shove these stupid CDs.

"What's up with you today?" Jesse asked, tone betraying genuine concern. He'd been her best friend since second grade, practically like the brother she never wanted at this point, and it was hard to muster up any actual annoyance anymore when he asked her prying, emotional questions. That didn't stop her from trying on occasion, though.

"Nothing," she growled half-heartedly. She started sliding CDs back in the proper way, frown still twisting her lips. 

"Doesn't sound like nothing," Jesse countered, and Beca shot him a glare. Jesse raised his hands in surrender and went back to stacking his own crate of CDs for a moment. Beca reveled in the silence for all of thirty seconds before he spoke again, tone that of sudden realization this time. "Oh, wait. Crap," he exclaimed quietly. "Is this- This is about your mom, isn't it? Crap, Beca, I'm sorry. I completely forgot that was today." 

Beca shrugged, frown deepening, and shoved another CD into place. "Don't worry about it," she told him. "I don't want to talk about it, anyway." 

Jesse sighed heavily, but he knew her well enough to know he shouldn't push it, so they went back to working in silence.

That was another thing Beca appreciated about Jesse Swanson. He rarely tried to force her into anything – his ridiculous movie nights notwithstanding – and so their friendship was a steady one of mutual respect and understanding. 

It also helped that Jesse was the only one who knew her secret. Mostly because it was his secret, as well. They'd known about this shared trait – curse, really – almost as long as they'd known each other.

When you could see someone's age of death plastered on their forehead, it was kind of hard not to notice when other people could see it, too. 

Try as she might, Beca could never manage to avoid looking at a person's forehead for long after first meeting them. It had been like that for as long as she could remember. Jesse was the same way. So when they sat across from each other that first day of second grade and stared at one another's foreheads instead of into their eyes the way most people did, that first moment of mutual understanding had hit them hard and fast. It had taken them another few days to actually talk about this weird thing they could both do, but the connection had been there from the start. Of course, they hadn't really understood what the numbers meant at that age, but when their third grade teacher Mrs. Hargrave (56) kieled over and died of a heart attack in the middle of a math lesson, they'd started to figure it out together.

Now, ten years later, Jesse was her best friend (her only friend, really) and Beca could take comfort in knowing he'd be around for a good long time to come (until age 87, to be specific). Of course, she couldn't be sure she would make it that long, as well, but she liked to believe it would be close enough. They couldn't see their own numbers, even in the mirror, and even when they hadn't been sure what the numbers meant, Jesse had been convinced he didn't want to know his own – and he'd always refused to tell Beca hers, either. And somehow, they'd managed to respect that pact resolutely through the years.

That morbid secret was pretty much where their similarities ended, however. Whereas Beca was cynical, sarcastic, and more or less emotionally stunted, Jesse was generally cheerful and optimistic even in the face of the darker aspects of their ability, convinced that they had to look for the positives in it wherever they could. He had his darker moments – how could he not – but as a whole, he tried his best to remain upbeat about it, or at least to ignore it as much as possible. That was probably why he spent so much time watching movies. The people onscreen were distant enough for him to detach himself from their numbers, and dark movie theaters made it nearly impossible to see the numbers of anyone around him. Jesse also had more friends than Beca (mostly his dorky singing group at school), though none he was as close to, for the same reasons she didn't have any at all aside from him. Constantly seeing the expiration dates of everyone you knew could get pretty exhausting after a while. His neighbor Benji was the closest he got to having a second best friend, and Beca had an inkling that along with Benji's admittedly endearing enthusiasm, the fact that he'd live to the ripe old age of 98 made him a comfortable choice. 

Beca, on the other hand, was content see almost every other person as little more than a walking number. If she let herself think any deeper about it, she would probably be having existential panic attacks on an hourly basis, rather than the mere few times a month to which she'd been able to whittle them down.

The benefit – or perhaps downside – of Jesse sharing this plight with her was that it allowed him to comprehend Beca's guilt over her mother's death four years prior in a way even her father never could. When she was little, Beca had tried countless times to ask her parents about the weird numbers on everybody's heads. They'd gone from amusement to dismissal pretty quickly, then eventually progressed to concern for her sanity, discussing when they thought she couldn't hear whether she might need psychiatric help, at which point Beca had quickly learned to keep her mouth shut about the whole thing. Once she'd finally figured out what the numbers meant, the panic attacks had started, renewing her parents' concern, but she'd learned to stifle those, too, with the help of music. Then it was just a matter of figuring out how to change the much-too-small number on her mother's forehead, because it couldn't possibly be right. But she'd learned the truth of that only a few years later. Her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic adenocarcinoma and died shortly after Beca turned twelve. Nothing she and Jesse tried ever managed to change that 36 on her forehead, and Beca determined then that nothing ever could. The numbers were fixed. 

She'd always been a somewhat surly kid, but Beca's worldview was irrevocably altered the day her mom died, and even Jesse couldn't have swayed her course. Not that he really tried – that had become a pretty dark time for him, as well, for a while there. 

The only other major similarity Beca shared with Jesse was their love of music, which is why they'd both gotten jobs at the local radio station as soon as summer started at the end of their junior year of high school. Clearly, it didn't turn out to be as exciting as they'd anticipated, but it was something to do, and at least they were getting paid. 

The station also had very few employees and almost never any visitors, which made it the perfect excuse to avoid people for hours a day, an inclination Beca's father never understood or approved of, but which Beca resolutely refused to change. 

After a while, Beca spoke again, if only to reassure Jesse that she wasn't actually mad at him for bringing up the anniversary of her mother's death. "Do you ever think about how we'll probably be alone forever?" Still, the topic of conversation didn't have to be all sunshine and rainbows now. 

Jesse scoffed. "Way to lighten the mood, Bec." 

"Just saying," Beca said with a shrug. "How can we ever be completely comfortable with someone when we know when it'll all end? Instead of enjoying the time we have, we'll just be counting down the days." 

"Well, I like to think that when the right person comes along, you'll forget all about countdowns and death and all of that stuff. They'll make you so happy that most of the time you'll be too distracted to remember to think about the dark stuff. Or, at least, you'll love them so much, it won't matter how long you get to be with them, because a little time is better than none at all." Jesse finished just as he slid his last CD into place, dusting his hands together with a satisfied sigh. 

It was Beca's turn to scoff now, eyes rolling as she finished up her own stacking. "Right. I think you watch too many movies, dude. Real life isn't like that."

Jesse shrugged and tossed up his hands in a 'who knows?' sort of gesture. "You'll see, Bec. I'm right about this. I mean, don't we deserve it after all this crap?" He pointed to his forehead, right where the '87' stood out clear as day. "It's, like, a universal law, or something." 

"Sure, dude," Beca said, nesting her empty crate into Jesse's so he could carry them over to their storage place by the sound booth. "Keep telling yourself that," she added, a little more softly, because she kind of meant it. Maybe she would forever be too cynical to share Jesse's positive outlook, but that didn't mean she wanted  _him_  to stop believing that things would work out for the better. He deserved that, she thought. Probably more than she did.

Jesse snapped his fingers once as he walked back towards her. "And hey, if all else fails, we can marry  _each_   _other_!"

Beca's answering grimace had him laughing for the rest of their shift. 

* * *

 She met Chloe Beale three days later.

Beca was walking out of the coffee shop a block from the radio station, carrying a cardboard tray of coffees for herself, Luke, and the front desk guy Paul, along with a hot chocolate for Jesse, who was still a big child in Beca's completely justified opinion. The tray was balanced on one hand as she pulled open the door with the other, and she was too focused on keeping the tray stable to notice as she stepped directly into the path of a girl jogging down the sidewalk outside. One minute, she was totally rocking the whole coordination thing, and the next, both she and the jogger were drenched in a combination of scalding liquid and Paul's iced mocha. Suddenly Beca was both burning and freezing and the girl she'd crashed into let out a surprised shriek as she presumably experienced the same terrible sensation. 

"Shit. Oh, fuck. I'm so sorry," Beca exclaimed. She was somehow still holding the empty tray and she quickly dropped it in favor of trying to pull her drenched t-shirt away from her body. "Shit. Ow. Are you okay?" She looked up to check, because the other girl still hadn't said anything, and her breath immediately caught in her throat at the sight before her.

Vibrant, curly red hair pulled back in a low ponytail revealed a lightly freckled face and the bluest eyes Beca had ever seen. The girl, who looked to be around Beca's age, was so unbelievably pretty that Beca was half convinced she'd already died of embarassmemt and gone to heaven, or something. Damn Jesse for never telling her she'd die at seventeen.

She was saved from blurting out anything stupid – like those exact words, Jesus, Beca – when the girl finally spoke. 

"I'm okay, really. I think most of it got on you, actually," she said with a wince and nod towards the shirt Beca still had plucked away from her abdomen.

Beca quickly released it, the wet fabric slapping against her as she only just remembered to feel the lingering sting of her scalded skin. "Oh. Good." Her gaze drifted from blue, blue eyes to brightly colored workout attire, which, in contrast to Beca's own clothing, was actually more splattered than drenched, as the girl had said. Well, small mercies. "Um." Her gaze dropped lower, to the mess on the sidewalk between them, and she sighed. She'd have to go buy more drinks, now. And this time with her own money. Crap. 

"I'll help you," the girl said, and Beca realized she must have said some or all of that out loud, because the girl was now grinning widely at her and holding the door open for them to go inside. "It's partly my fault anyway," she added as Beca bent to scoop up the scattered cups and step back into the shop. "I saw a cute puppy across the street and wasn't really watching where I was going."

Beca dumped the cups and tray in the trash by the door and made her way to the counter with the girl at her side. She was still sort of panicking about the whole situation when the girl's next words caught her attention.

"I'm Chloe, by the way. Chloe Beale. My family just moved here from Portland." 

"Um, Beca." Beca nodded at the barista (Jen, 76), who had clearly witnessed that whole disaster and was already ringing up her same order with a sympathetic smile. She paid while Chloe grabbed a handful of napkins and another tray and then they made their way to the end of the counter. When Chloe passed her some of the napkins, Beca shot her a smile she hoped looked less like a grimace than she felt it did. "Thanks," she said, looking down as she patted ineffectually at her stained t-shirt. Why hadn't she gone with the black one this morning instead? Ugh. "So, Portland, huh?" she asked, figuring she should acknowledge Chloe's words from a moment ago so as not to come off like the antisocial jerk she actually was. "Why'd you move to Barden?" 

She saw Chloe shrug in her periphery. "My mom got a promotion in Atlanta and my dad wanted a bigger house and yard, so since the commute's not too bad for her, we moved here."

Beca bobbed her head. "Makes sense," she said, then sighed. She hadn't done much more than spread damp bits of paper napkin all over the stain on her Arctic Monkeys t-shirt. Great.

She couldn't help the flush that spread across her face when she heard Chloe giggle beside her. And somehow, without even looking, Beca knew those blue eyes would be twinkling at her. How could they not? The girl was probably the closest she'd ever come to seeing a real Disney princess. (And Beca's parents had taken her to Disney World when she was nine, so that was saying something. Not that she remembered much about that experience beyond the trauma of finding out when every one of those beloved Disney characters would die. That was still in the height of Beca's panic attack stage, and they'd had to leave the park early that day.) 

It was then that Beca realized she'd never looked at Chloe's number. It was the first time ever that she'd neglected to do so upon meeting someone. Her gaze had been arrested by those blue eyes and she just... hadn't looked up. Beca couldn't help remembering Jesse's words from a few days earlier, about the right person making you forget, but she quickly pushed that thought aside. 

Now that she was thinking about it, though, Beca was having a hard time  _not_  glancing back up to check Chloe's forehead. It was a compulsion, so ingrained in her that she couldn't remember not having it, but just this once, Beca desperately didn't want to look up. She didn't want to know when this kind, gorgeous girl would die.

She managed to avoid checking for the entire length of time it took to get her new order from the barista, let Chloe stick the cups in the tray, and walk down the road towards the station, Chloe carefully carrying the drinks this time after insisting. They'd made small talk the whole way, and if Chloe noticed that Beca was avoiding looking in her direction, she graciously didn't mention it. But when they finally stopped outside the door of the radio station and Beca prepared to say goodbye, she found it harder to avoid raising her eyes from her dirty sneakers.

Still, she let her gaze linger somewhere over Chloe's left shoulder as she said, "Thanks, for the help. And sorry again about spilling coffee on you." 

Chloe flapped a hand dismissively. "Oh, don't worry about it. They're just my running clothes," she said. "Sorry about your shirt, though. That's a bummer. The Arctic Monkeys are awesome."

Beca felt a genuine smile stretch one side of her face. "You know them?" 

"Of course!"

Beca's eyes flickered over to Chloe's right shoulder. She dug the toe of one sneaker into a crack in the sidewalk. "Hey, so, since you're new in town, maybe you'd like to hang out sometime? I could show you around, or... whatever." She didn't know what possibly possessed her to say such a thing. If Jesse were here he'd probably be laughing in gleeful mockery at this sudden 180 in Beca's socialization habits – or else, he'd be expressing concern that she'd finally leapt off the deep end into full-on insanity. One of the two.

"I'd love to!" Chloe exclaimed, pulling Beca from the brink of another panic spiral. "Here, I'll give you my number." And without any apparent reservations regarding personal space, she shifted the coffee tray to one hand and reached into Beca's front jeans pocket to tug her phone free, briefly holding it out for Beca to tap in the passcode before navigating to the messaging app and sending herself a quick text. "There," she declared a moment later, handing the phone back to Beca. "Now I have your number, too. So I can hold you to your word about showing me around." And even without looking directly at her, Beca could see the wink Chloe shot her.

Flushing slightly, Beca stuffed her phone back in her pocket and took the coffee tray when Chloe handed it to her a second later. "Uh, thanks," she said again. "I'll see you later?" 

"Yep!" Chloe's smile widening was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and without really meaning to, Beca's gaze finally shifted to Chloe's face, sliding slowly up from shiny white teeth, to sparkling blue eyes, and then to the number sitting just slightly left of center on Chloe's forehead, just past a small scar above her right eyebrow. 

Beca was sure she felt her heart stop in that moment, as her eyes traced the digits and she willed them to see something different from the number that seemed to be glaring tauntingly back at her. 

Eighteen.


End file.
